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WWCD: What would Cheney do

The former vice president, through years of public statements and internal deliberations during the Bush administration, fashioned a distinctly different school of thought about how to operate in the midst of a Washington storm.

That philosophy, in a word: defiance.

Don’t feed bodies to the Washington wolves through resignations and firings. The pack will just get hungrier. After Obama announced the IRS’s acting director was resigning Wednesday, various Republicans called Thursday for a broader IRS probe, a special prosecutor and criminal charges to be filed.

Don’t accept the premise of partisan critics and commentators that some controversy or another is genuinely a big deal. That projects weakness, demoralizes supporters and suggests the opposition is on the level, rather than driven by self-interest and hypocrisy.

Don’t show transparency by turning over internal documents and e-mails to the news media and Congress. It’s none of their business and weakens the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency. Note that the release of emails about Benghazi talking points only generated GOP calls for additional records from the aftermath of the attack.

What would Cheney do is not a question, to put it mildly, that Democrats are prone to asking. And Cheney’s own history shows that his approach can carry big political costs. An aide and his daughter, Liz, did not respond to emails for comment.

But as Obama’s early moves so far have not notably succeeded in quieting the scandal dogs and allowing him to regain control of his public image, it invites speculation of what his options would look like if he applied Cheney-style logic to his current predicament.

*The uproar over Justice Department subpoenas of records of the Associated Press? This one is easy to imagine. Obama would say “Damn, right,” and offer robust support for the idea of criminal probes of sources and news organizations who reveal national security secrets. There would be howls of indignation among Washington’s chattering class, but probably considerable support among the public at large.

On Thursday, asked about this scandal, the president began with a Cheneyesque riff about prosecuting leakers (“I make no apologies”) but then he muddied his answer by endorsing a law to shield the press from prosecutors.